Put Yourself in His Place Part 34

"I'll give it to him."

"If you please, ma'am, I was to give it him myself."

Henry recognized the voice, opened the door, and invited her in.

Mrs. Little followed her, full of suppressed curiosity.

This put Jael out, but she was too patient to show it.

"It is the bust," said she; and put it softly down on the table with her strong arms.

Henry groaned. "She despises even that; she flings it at my head without a word."

"Nay; I have got a note for you."

"Then why didn't you give it me at once?" cried Henry impatiently.

She handed him the note without a word.

It ran thus:

"Miss Carden presents her compliments to Mr. Little, and sends him his beautiful bust. She is grieved that he will accept no remuneration for his lessons; and begs permission to offer her best wishes for his happiness and prosperity."

The gentleness of this disarmed Henry, and at the same time the firmness crushed him. "It is all over!" he cried, despairingly: "and yet I can't hate her."

He ran from the room, unable to restrain his tears, and too proud and fiery to endure two spectators of his grief.

Mrs. Little felt as mothers feel toward those who wound their young.

"Is it the woman's likeness?" said she bitterly, and then trembled with emotion.

"Ay."

"May I see it?"

"Surely, ma'am." And Jael began to undo the paper.

But Mrs. Little stopped her. "No, not yet. I couldn't bear the sight of a face that has brought misery upon him. I would rather look at yours.

It is a very honest one. May I inquire your name?"

"Jael Dence--at your service."

"Dence! ah, then no wonder you have a good face: a Cairnhope face. My child, you remind me of days gone by. Come and see me again, will you?

Then I shall be more able to talk to you quietly."

"Ay, that I will, ma'am." And Jael colored all over with surprise, and such undisguised pleasure that Mrs. Little kissed her at parting.

She had been gone a considerable time, when Henry came back; he found his mother seated at the table, eying his masterpiece with stern and bitter scrutiny.

It was a picture, those two rare faces in such close opposition. The carved face seemed alive; but the living face seemed inspired, and to explore the other to the bottom with merciless severity. At such work the great female eye is almost terrible in its power.

"It is lovely," said she. "It seems n.o.ble. I can not find what I know must be there. Oh, why does G.o.d give such a face as this to a fool?"

"Not a word against her," said Henry. "She is as wise, and as n.o.ble, and as good, as she is beautiful. She has but one fault; she loves another man. Put her sweet face away; hide it from me till I am an old man, and can bring it out to show young folks why I lived and die a bachelor.

Good-by, dear mother, I must saddle Black Harry, and away to my night's work."

The days were very short now, and Henry spent two-thirds of his time in Cairnhope Church. The joyous stimulus of his labor was gone but the habit remained, and carried him on in a sort of leaden way. Sometimes he wondered at himself for the hardships he underwent merely to make money, since money had no longer the same charm for him; but a good workman is a patient, enduring creature, and self-indulgence, our habit, is after all, his exception. Henry worked heavily on, with his sore, sad heart, as many a workman had done before him. Unfortunately his sleep began to be broken a good deal. I am not quite clear whether it was the after-clap of the explosion, or the prolonged agitation of his young heart, but at this time, instead of the profound sleep that generally rewards the sons of toil, he had fitful slumbers, and used to dream strange dreams, in that old church, so full of gaunt sights and strange sounds. And, generally speaking, however these dreams began, the figure of Grace Carden would steal in ere he awoke. His senses, being only half asleep, colored his dreams; he heard her light footstep in the pattering rain, and her sweet voice in the musical moan of the desolate building; desolate as his heart when he awoke, and behold it was a dream.

The day after Christmas-day began brightly, but was dark and lowering toward afternoon. Mrs. Little advised Henry to stay at home. But he shook his head. "How could I get through the night? Work is my salvation. But for my forge, I should perhaps end like--" he was going to say "my poor father." But he had the sense to stop.

Unable to keep him at home, the tender mother got his saddlebags, and filled his flask with brandy, and packed up a huge piece of Yorkshire pie, and even stuffed in a plaid shawl. And she strained her anxious eyes after him as he rode off.

When he got among the hills, he found it was snowing there very hard; and then, somehow, notwithstanding all the speed he made, it was nearly dark when he got on the moor, and the tracks he used to go by, over the dangerous ground, were effaced.

He went a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and it was the old church.

The scene was truly dismal: the church was already overburdened with snow, and still the huge flakes fell fast and silently, and the little mountain stream, now swollen to a broad and foaming torrent, went roaring by, behind the churchyard wall.

Henry shivered, and made for the shelter.

The horse, to whom this church was merely a well-ventilated stable, went in and clattered up the aisle, saddle-bags and all.

Henry locked the door inside, and soon blew the coals to a white heat.

The bellows seemed to pant unnaturally loud, all was so deadly still.

The windows were curtained with snow, that increased the general gloom, though some of the layers shone ghostly white and crystalline, in the light of the forge, and of two little grates he had set in a monument.

Two heaps of snow lay in the center aisle, just under two open places in the roof, and, on these, flakes as big as a pennypiece kept falling through the air, and glittered like diamonds as they pa.s.sed through the weird light of the white coals.

Oh! it was an appalling place, that night; youth and life seemed intruders. Henry found it more than he could bear. He took a couple of candles, placed them in bottles, and carried them to the western window, and there lighted them. This one window was protected by the remains of iron-work outside, and the whole figure of one female saint in colored gla.s.s survived.

This expedient broke the devilish blackness, and the saint shone out glorious.

The horrid spell thus broken in some degree, Henry plied his hammer, and made the church ring, and the flaming metal fly.

But by-and-by, as often happened to him now, a drowsiness overcame him at the wrong time. In vain he battled against it. It conquered him even as he worked; and, at last, he leaned with his arms against the handle of the bellows, and dozed as he stood.

He had a dream of that kind which we call a vision, because the dream seems to come to the dreamer where he is.

He dreamed he was there at his forge, and a soft voice called to him.

He turned, and lo! between him and the western window stood six female figures, all dressed in beautiful dresses, but of another age, and of many colors, yet transparent; and their faces fair, but white as snow: and the ladies courtesied to him, with a certain respectful majesty beyond description: and, somehow, by their faces, and their way of courtesying to him, he knew they were women of his own race, and themselves aware of the relationship.

Then several more such figures came rustling softly through the wall from the churchyard, and others rose from the vaults and took their places quietly, till there was an avenue of dead beauties; and they stood in an ascending line up to the west window. Some stood on the ground, some on the air; that made no difference to them.

Another moment, and then a figure more lovely than them all shone in the window, at the end of that vista of fair white faces.